Waking Up Costs

Clark Venable, M.D.

Clark Venable — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 07:53:24 GMT

Lifehacker suggested setting up a nameplate site way back in February of 2006. This post is my attempt to get Google to index it: http://www.clarkvenablemd.net/.

Catalogs Clogging Your Mailbox?

Clark Venable — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 10:57:39 GMT

I am convinced that the fact that two of our letter carriers have gone on disability is in large part due to the number of mail order catalogs we receive each day at home. For a while I was actually calling companies to ask we be taken off their list. Now I've found something better--Catalogchoice.org.

"The mission of Catalog Choice is to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate which catalogs they no longer wish to receive, and businesses can receive a list of consumers no longer wanting to receive their catalogs."

I've declined twenty catalogs so far and can't wait for today's mail to arrive so I can decline some more!

MedlinePlus Works Well on Small Device Browsers like N95

Clark Venable — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

My Nokia N95 runs the Symbian OS. Epocrates only runs on Palm and PocketPC devices. Epocrates online seems not to know what to do when a small device browser accesses it. I can log in, but the site is really unusable on a small screen (I've written to Epocrates to suggest they consider adding support for small devices/screen). So where do I get drug information? From the government!

I just discovered that the National Library of Medicine's Medline Plus does play well with small screens/browsers. Below is a screenshot of the Medline Plus page on Opera for Handheld Devices:

Compare this to the page view on the N95's built-in browser:

Makes the $29 for Opera worth it, don't you think?

The Ether Way on the Preop Interview

Clark Venable — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:54:03 GMT

Right on, brother:

"Long ago, my preop interview became less pre-flight check-list and more gut-check and sniffing for smoke. (I'll write more about sniffing for smoke in another post) Paradoxically perhaps, the most important thing to me is to bond to the patient; it's the second part of that WCW observation. I might do eight or ten cases in a day; the consequence of treating my work as a technical exercise is the risk of inattention and the sort of boredom that drives the desperate discontent that I see in so many of my colleagues."

[The Ether Way]

Sermo: Finally a good online forum for physicians

Clark Venable — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:43:00 GMT

I just stumbled upon Sermo, a web community for physicians only:

"Here, physicians aggregate observations from their daily practice and then - rapidly and in large numbers - challenge or corroborate each others opinions, accelerating the emergence of trends and new insights on medications, devices and treatments. You can then apply the collective knowledge to achieve better outcomes for your patients."

Now, if they'd only have RSS feeds....

Status Report on Google Modules

Clark Venable — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:59:15 GMT

A while ago Seth Dillingham wrote two Google modules for me: Allowable Blood Loss and BMI Calculator. Well, I still have a hard time finding them on Googles own module site, but I can find them both on googlemodules.com--the 'Unofficial Google Modules Site'.

I wanted to pass along another use for the allowable blood loss calculator--estimating surgical blood loss. Anesthetists are asked to estimate the volume of surgical blood loss that occurs during a procedure on their anesthetic record. Surgeons will often attempt to influence that figure downward by volunteering their own estimate of blood loss (often not grounded in reality) in the hope of getting me to go along with it.

In large blood loss cases where I've been following the hematocrit I use the formula to calculate the actual blood loss. For example, if a 100 kg male started with a hematocrit of 0.40 and wound up with a hematocrit of 0.32 I calculate their blood loss as 1600 cc. No arguments.